20 Questions is a game of deductive reasoning. It became popular in the 1940s when it was the subject of successful radio show by the same name.

One player -- the answerer -- thinks of a subject that should be familiar to common people and answers all questions about this subject with a yes or no response. The other player(s) ask questions to guess what this is, winning if they guess without exceeding 20 questions.

Inspired by 20q, the game by Radica, I set out to create a better computer program that could play this game. The new game, 19 Questions, strives to use a better mathematical model (likelihood and entropy rather than neural networks) to play the game.

The Philadelphia government watch dog website hallwatch.org, maintained by Ed Goppelt was shut down February 2009, but a new website, Hallwatch 2, looks to take its place. Hallwatch 2 aspires to make it easy to stay informed about Philadelphia politics by bringing visitors to the latest information. There is also a subscription service for Philadelphia tax records, deed information and other real estate records, but information about that is scarce at this time. It will be a long time before Hallwatch 2 reaches its stated goal of becoming "the new Hallwatch," especially in terms to Ed Goppelt's success in suing and getting records from the city and bringing the whole community together.